Ryuta Monotoki
Ryuta Monotoki (often known as Bionic Zero only to the Far West Maverick Hunter), is a member of the Vermillion Monastery and founder of the Blazkrieg Squadron. He is the only known human to be regarded as a threat to the public by Maverick Hunter due mainly to old, outdated evidence concerning the traumatic moments of his time spent in the unnamed organization, and often hides under the Vermillion robes more as the equivelent to a barb-wire fence to prevent Maverick Hunter from apprehending him in front of public eyes than to hide his true identity from them. Summary ''Misunderstood Lives '' Ryuta is the latest victim on record to be snatched off the street by an unnamed organization, hellbent on "corking the existence of war" by snatching humans off the street and reconstructing them into war machines bearing the brains of a human, the durability of a reploid, and the obedience of a Mechaniloid. He was to be their greatest masterpiece after they unearthed the remains of Zero's old body and schemed to incorporate them into his reconstructed body. Unfortunately, they were only able to fully transfer the antiviral programs from the body when Maverick Hunter (then catagorized by units) busted into the facility on claim that Mavericks where kidnapping and mutilating humans for their own sick pleasures. The sight of humans vilating other humans was so horrifying it caused Unit 17 commander, X, to literally shuts down from overloading his processors with excuses debunking the obvious reason for their actions. While Ryuta sat in the R&D Lab with the other victims, who all had visible signs of being severely traumatized by their ordeals with the unnamed organization, he began observing his own body, the horror and trauma he once suffered slowly melting away as he starts to admire the possibility of living as long as a reploid. Zero, who stayed in the R&D Lab to keep an eye on the victims, saw his coping as an open invitation for more humans to follow in the organizations footsteps. He claims Maverick Hunter has decided to put the victims in cryogenic slumber until cybernetic technology advances to the point of properly mimicking the human anatomy, and vows to make sure Ryuta is sealed along with them in order to prevent such a possibility from throwing the war far beyond its usual contenders. Horrified at the thought of going in and out of conscience while Maverick Hunter remains oblivious to the reason why, Ryuta blows up the R&D Lab and escapes Hunter Base through the Hanger, accidentally diving to the cold winter ocean where he drifted for an estimate year before being woken by two civilians who found him washed up on shore. When one of them suggested calling for help, Ryuta panics, thinking Maverick Hunter would become aware of his survival and use their professionalism to yank him back under their care, and almost kills them with the last of his firebombs, escaping into the forest while they were in the midst of recovering from their own shock. He hid in a recently unearthed Energon Cave where he was later found by Hajime Nakajima, a monk from the Vermillion Monastery in the midst of experimenting the energy storing capabilities of his Plasma Generator. He is brought to the monastery, who didn't immediately warm up to him due to the fiasco they sensed at the beach, and their Headmaster's careful observation of the incident leading to it, but believed he could reform from the "traumatic case" Maverick Hunter had blindly labled him as and gave him a month to adapt to their culture. From there, he gained the ability to sense the spirits and emotions of all organic beings, as well as control his emotional stress. Ryuta's first observasion of humans abusing Maverick Hunter's code occurred a couple days after he was accepted into the Monastery when he witnessed a gang of robbers breaking into a grocery store and threatening to call Maverick Hunter if the reploid employees didn't cooperate with their demands; they further cement the threat by covering themselves in ketchup and ground meat, thinking the sight would be all Maverick Hunter needed to pull rank on the police, retire the reploids and allow the criminals to go free with the stolen loot. While the situation was resolved with neither side suffering lethal damage, the realization of how much advantage human criminals might gain from Maverick Hunter's strict codes made Ryuta question just how determined they are to protect the public from the very reality of peace being a farcry from reality. His tolerance with Maverick Hunter's protective nature soon reaches its breaking point a few months later when savage Mavericks raided the monastery and killed nearly half the monks living there. Sensing two humans lingering in the shadows, projecting full responsibility for this fiasco, Ryuta chases them into Doppler Town where he comes across a police station flooded with other civilians complaining of their reploid friends going berserk after sampling some "new cuisine" passed out by the same humans he had been chasing. While a faction of the police pursued the culprits, Maverick Hunter was called to deal with the reploids driven berserk by their meddling. Unfortunately, Ryuta's biggest irritation came to light when Maverick Hunter's current commander declared the human criminal's actions the result of the outstretched war, rather than acknowledge their pure hatred for the very existence of reploids, and retired the brainwashed reploids on grounds of "unprovoked harm to humans". To make matters worse, the day following the execusion, which included the Monastery's most prized mascot, Vermillion Griffinix, whom X was pressured into executing as the ringleader that orchastrated the raid, the commander marches into the Monastery with a small unit and attempts to arrest their remaining reploid, Nite, on claim that he may be an accomplice helping Griffinix force the monks to accept Ryuta in order to continue goading his "xenophobic trauma". Though the attempt failed when the Monastery threatened to send evidence of their incompetence to the Federation, the fact that they would brazenly take Nite into custody simply because he was the only reploid that existed in the monstery aggravated him, vowing to put a stop to any future criminals who hide behind Maverick Hunter's protective codes and use them to drive off other authorities who tried to oppose their crimes. Thus, with the help of both Hajime and Nite, Blazkrieg was formed, using non-lethal scare tactics and brutality to subdue criminals who attempt to use innocent reploids as scapegoats to drag Maverick Hunter onto their side and disembowel any reason for human authorities to get involved. Though Blazkrieg has no intentions of waking the public to the reality of reploids not being the only species capable of Maverick-scale crimes, Maverick Hunter still sees them as a threat to Ryuta's psyche, afraid he would eventually reach the point where his hatred will drive him to eradicate everything that thinks humanly and bring about an even bigger war that could result in their perminant diactivation. Police authorities soon became fed up with the constant interferance of both Maverick Hunter and Blazkrieg and began stepping up the concept of "assault and battery", as well as "civilian endangerment" to incorporate the manipulation and framing of reploids, reducing the need to cooperate with Maverick Hunter unless they are certain the reploid is the one manipulating the humans. This would have been the perfect opportunity for Blazkrieg to retire and return to their lives, but Ryuta feels they need to do more than just focus on humans using reploids as scapegoats to further their schemes. While Hajime and Nite went back to their normal life as kindhearted monks, Ryuta began assisting Vermillion's brother monastery, Byakko, in finding weapons that could be deemed too dangerous to be found by even Maverick Hunter and storing them in their historical vault in an undisclosed area of the planet. Personality Ryuta may appear brash, hotheaded, and arrogant, but he does care about those he can sense a good soul from and won't hesitate to get involved in whatever situation they ask him to help them with. Most would think his refusal to go anywhere near Maverick Hunter is blatant overreacting on behalf of what he experienced during the early stages of Blazkrieg's formation. But their last encounter 50 years ago revealed that some of the veteran Hunters still see him as a threat to the public and would go out of their way to strip away any reason other veterans would have of acknowledging his ability to cope with his trauma and reinforce the reason he should be sealed away while the public still sees him as an ordinary reploid. Capabilities Aside from his ability to sense and see the spiritual emotions of living beings, Ryuta is the second best mechanic in the Monastery, falling short of Hajime's mechanical expertise. Much like Zero, Ryuta is immune to both the Sigma Virus, and its short lived upgrade, the Zero Virus, though he doesn't gain any attributes from the infection due possibily to the model it was transferred from. And while the scientists of the unnamed organization couldn't properly transfer Zero's special moves into Ryuta's cybernetic structure, it didn't stop them from duplicating them to the best of their research. Due to his favoring fire-type weaponry, however, he is only able to mimic fire-type techniques, requiring heavy concentration in order to make the F-Saber register his choice of maneuver. Ryuta's reconstructed shell is said to have been forged from the reamins of Zero's old body and modified to withstand temperature as hot as molten lava much like Magma Dragoon. One particular duplicate that has become a major problem is the Giga Crush attack. While not as powerful as the original, it can still deal near incapacitating damage in an estimate 5yrd radius of his current location, and can only be executed when he is seconds from fainting from the near blinding pain inflicted upon him. Any attempt to hold back, given he is aware of more than just the unbearable heat and weight of his right arm where the Giga Crush is unleashed, worsens his condition until he can no longer keep upright and drops the fist onto the ground, unleashing the near deadly explosion. In addition to the duplicate moves, Ryuta is also equipped with four types of bombs, two in each arm. The right arm contains fire and plasma bombs, while the left contain frost and smoke bombs. However they are prototypes, requiring the ingredients of food in order to make a bomb as powerful as a firecracker. The more bombs he unleashes, the hungerier he becomes, forcing him to think carefully of how much energy he needs to sacrifice and when to use it. In the end, Ryuta is more likely to use his low-powered beam saber than any of his other weapons due mainly to the amount of times he spends wandering the globe in his Vermillion Robe, only resorting to at least one bomb when he feels he is in a situation that can't be resolved with a simple shock to the system.